What We Believe

Doctrinal Statement of Heritage Baptist Church

The Bible
We believe the Holy Scriptures are the verbally inspired Word and Revelation of God. Every word of the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed in the originals and providentially preserved in the King James Bible.

The Trinity
We believe in the Triune God – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and that each are coequal and coeternal. Each has His individual identity and separate responsibilities for the purposes of redemption, yet are perfectly united as three Persons in One.

The Deity and Virgin Birth of Christ
We believe in the Deity of Jesus Christ. He is the only begotten, virgin-born Son of God, the second Person in the Blessed Trinity, God the Son. He is God manifest in human flesh.

Salvation Through Jesus Christ
We believe the Scriptures teach that faith in the shed blood and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only condition of salvation from sin; that this salvation is wholly by grace; and that no works, however good, make that salvation more secure. We believe the Scriptures teach that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour must repent of their sin and put their full dependence in the finished work of Jesus Christ. The new birth is instantaneous and not a process. It is effected solely by the power of God. In the new birth the one dead in trespasses and sins is made a partaker of the divine nature and receives eternal life. The Lord’s atonement was not limited with respect to whom God’s salvation is offered. His shed blood is sufficient for all sin and, therefore, “whosoever will” may believe and be saved to the uttermost. We believe in the eternal security of all believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. Once a lost sinner has become a ‘new creature in Christ,’ he can never lose that new relationship in the family of God which is based upon Christ’s imputed righteousness and not his own.

The Rapture and the Second Coming
We believe in the Rapture – the personal, premillennial, pretribulational, and imminent return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ “in the air.” This has been the “Blessed Hope” of every born-again believer in the Church Age. At that time, He will receive to Himself the resurrected bodies of those who have “died in Christ” and also all those who are presently alive and “in Christ.” He will then come “with His saints” seven years thereafter to execute judgment upon the ungodly nations before the inauguration of His earthly millennial reign at His second coming to the earth. The Lord will cast the Antichrist and the False Prophet into the lake of fire, send Satan into the abyss, and establish His earthly kingdom. The Lord Jesus Christ will reign one thousand years, thus, literally fulfilling the covenant promises made to a believing remnant of Israel through the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. After the earthly reign of one thousand years, He will bring all the unsaved dead to the judgment of the Great White Throne, and all who stand before that Throne will be cast forever into the lake of fire where Satan has already been cast.

Heaven and Hell
We believe that Heaven is a real place of eternal blessedness prepared by God for those whose garments have been “made white” through faith in the shed “blood of the Lamb.” Hell is a real place of eternal suffering for those whose names are not written in the “book of life.” There is no intermediate state in which the unsaved can atone for his own sins.

Creation and Man’s Fall
We believe God created man in His own image and after His own likeness and that act of creation was not a process of evolution but that He created the entire universe and all things in it in six literal twenty-four hour days. Man was created in innocence, but by his own choice fell from his sinless state, and as a consequence all mankind has inherited a sinful nature. We are all not only sinners by nature but also sinners by choice and are under God’s condemnation unless reborn by God’s grace.

The Local Church
We believe God has ordained the ministry of local, independent, self-governing assemblies of believers to accomplish His work. The church’s membership is to be composed of regenerated, baptized believers. The two ordinances of the local church are believer’s baptism by immersion and the memorial of the Lord’s Supper until He returns. The church is to be missionary-minded and evangelistic in spreading the Gospel into all the world. It is to strive together for the faith of the Gospel, proclaim and maintain purity of doctrine and practice, and worship and serve the Lord in “spirit and truth.”